


Close to the Bone

by rose_indigo_and_tom



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23746621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_indigo_and_tom/pseuds/rose_indigo_and_tom
Summary: The night before they leave for the summer they have, like, a totally normal conversation. It’s not a conversation full of loaded silences and high emotions. It’s just the kind of shit they always talk about. Things will turn out however they turn out, and they’ll both be back in Philly at the end of the summer and that’ll be that.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63
Collections: Flyers Fic Exchange





	Close to the Bone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jolach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/gifts).



> Thank you to calla and manybumblebees for organizing the exchange! And jolach, I really hope you like it. This is my first time writing for this pairing, and I had so much fun with it!
> 
> Title from "One Kind Word" by Front Country.

The night before they leave for the summer they have, like, a totally normal conversation. It’s not a conversation full of loaded silences and high emotions. It’s just the kind of shit they always talk about. Video games. Plans for the summer. Dumb shit their teammates posted on Snapchat. They definitely don’t talk about what their relationship is going to look like over the summer, because that would be unbearably vulnerable and definitely unnecessary. Things will turn out however they turn out, and they’ll both be back in Philly at the end of the summer and that’ll be that.

It is a little weird of a night, because they’re hanging out on Travis’ couch in his apartment with all his boxes and his shit he’s getting ready to haul back to Ontario. Normally when they hang out, there’s like, belongings. An xbox or whatever. But in any case, they have a totally normal conversation like the ones they’ve been having for a week, ever since they realized they were both heading home sooner rather than later, after the Flyers’ early exit. They hug, before they leave, which doesn’t always happen, and then Nolan heads upstairs to get some sleep before his early flight.

———

Travis drives up to Ontario, spends time with his family and childhood friends. Hunts and fishes. All the shit he normally does, because summer is the fucking best. He has this old Jeep he keeps up at his parents’ house, the car he’d had in juniors, fucking, no doors or roof, covered in mud, rattle-trap old thing. For driving any proper distance he obviously has his truck, but driving the Jeep is like, a sentimental thing. Sun on his face, wind ruffling his hair, the radio blasting Sam Hunt way too loud. Him and Brayton from next door had traded hand jobs in this car, him and Sydney from French class had made out over the steering column, him and his boys had driven aimlessly, spitting chew into empty Timmy’s iced coffee cups. The Jeep means summer and it means home.

Fishing and swimming and fucking around with his friends is great. There’s just so much nothing to be doing. Maybe some guys would get bored like this, just hanging out in this small town all summer, but Travis loves Clachan. He loves knowing all the old ladies he runs into at the supermarket, loves how many stars you can see, loves the worn-in familiarity of it all. 

For the beginning of summer, it’s like the whole rest of the world fades away, like everybody else is living their lives at normal speed, and Travis is on this island that’s going half speed. It’s not like he never thinks about Patty, or his other friends on the team or whatever. It’s just that for a few weeks, it’s like whatever’s happening outside of his little bubble doesn’t even matter.

It can’t stay like that forever, obviously. At some point he has to start ramping up training, think about meeting up with some other guys he knows to work with a personal trainer. Training is good, it feels good to push his body without the strain of late season injuries or lost muscle. Feels good to see glances lingering over his arms and chest, too. 

And even when he’s training, it’s still summer. The days go by syrup slow, and the weeks faster than anything. There’s beer and friends and iced capps and good music. He gets a new tattoo, some real fucking sentimental shit with his family’s birthdays and coordinates for Clachan. The guy does a good job though, makes it fit in with the rest of the sleeve he’s working on. Maybe some of the guys on the team would rib him about it, but what the fuck are they gonna say? Not like they don’t all love their mamas too. 

He doesn’t really talk to Patty all summer, just a few texts a week, and daily Snapchats to keep up their streak. There’s only one time when they talk on the phone, so late at night it’s almost early. He’s lying out in his hammock, listening to the bugs and looking at the sky and drifting in and out of sleep, when his phone starts ringing.

His first thought is, _why isn’t my phone on Do Not Disturb_.

His second thought is, _who's calling right now??_

His third thought, upon seeing the Caller ID is _Patty? I love that dude!_

It’s Nolan calling, so obviously he picks up. 

“Hey man, what’s up?” he says, his voice a little rough from disuse and sleep.

“I just wanted to talk to you! I was hanging out with my friends and they were all talking about their fuckin’ girlfriends and shit and I was feeling sad about being single but then I thought _You know who’s great? Teeks!_ and then I called you.” He giggles.

This is approximately more words than Nolan has said in a row to TK, like, ever. And way more animated than he ever is, too. 

“You good, bud?”

“Yeah,” Pats says, almost dreamy. “One of the guys smoked me out tonight, and I haven’t done that since _last_ summer. He’s so great. You’re so great, Trav, did you know that?”

Travis smiles, chuffs a short little laugh. “Thanks bud. You having a good time out there?”

“Yeah, it’s really chill. Good group of guys, good weather. Training’s good too, I forgot what it was like to work out when everything worked exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

There’s a little silence. Travis can hear Nolan breathing on the other end, can hear the faint noises of people talking in another room.

“Did you leave your friends to call me?”

Nolan giggles again. “Obviously. You’re the best, and I haven’t seen you in weeks!”

Travis is trying really hard not to have feelings about the fact that when everyone else was thinking about their significant others, Patty was thinking about him. Patty’s high off his ass, he probably isn’t thinking about it like that. 

“Look dude, it’s really late here, I’ve got to go. Drink water before you go to bed.”

“Okay, goodnight!” 

“Night.” Travis hangs up, feels the silence. Listens to the bugs a little bit. And then rolls over and falls asleep in the hammock and wakes up at ass o’clock when the sun starts to come up, freezing cold and covered in dew.

They don’t talk on the phone again, and especially don’t talk about that conversation, but they do text a little more. It’s nice. Pats is a good friend and even though TK has other good friends in Ontario, he did miss him. 

In the privacy of his own mind, though, TK does think about it. Thinks about Nolan, sprawled out, loose limbed and calm, thinks about him sharp and closed off after the early end to their season. Thinks about the looks Patty gives him sometimes when they’re getting dinner or having coffee. It’s not something, but it’s not nothing either. He tries so hard not to read anything into the late night conversation, but it’s one thing to tell yourself that something doesn’t mean anything, and another thing to persuade your heart that it shouldn’t seize upon it and take off running.

The rest of his summer goes on like that—hunting and fishing and working out and hanging with the people he’s known his whole life. By September, he’s feeling loose and warm and summer happy, like he’s prepared for the steely grind that the season is going to be. 

———

Nolan has a fucking good summer. He’s got his friends back in Winnipeg, his sisters. It’s not that he can’t be himself around the team, but there’s something so freeing about not being Nolan Patrick, Number Two Overall, or Nolan Patrick, Philadelphia Flyers Number 19. He’s just fucking, just Patty. None of these people expect him to be anything except who he is.

Which is, of course, why he has two new tattoos (his friend’s art, old hat now) and a pierced septum (his eyes water something crazy) within a month of getting home. He plays a lot of roller hockey, smokes weed in his childhood bedroom with the end of the joint pressed right up by the window screen.

He drinks rosé on the patio, and listens to the kind of music Travis teases him about (as if that asshole has any room to talk) and reads books that are probably supposed to be way over his head. It’s like. The league always wants to say You Can Play, and his teammates would probably say they don’t give a shit what he reads or what he thinks about, but the fact of the matter is that they would probably give him shit for it, if they knew what exactly he was reading about and thinking about.

It’s like. You can be a little different, you can grow your hair long and let your teammate tie your fucking ties for you, but you can’t let people see you with a copy of Stone Butch Blues. 

All this to say that he splits the first part of his summer between ambiguous yearning for things to be nebulously different, and fucking with his appearance. 

Then he starts training for the season with Toews, which should eventually stop being the kind of mindfuck that it is right now. So far, it hasn’t. Toews is great, they’re sort of friends, or whatever, but it’s still a little weird to be doing burpees next to a guy whose poster you jacked off to as a teenager. Or whatever. Training is less of the secret weird nerd bliss that the first part of the summer was, but it’s still way more relaxed than the season. When he’s done working out, he just gets to take a shower and go home, doesn’t have to talk to a group of reporters about how, exactly, he’s been fucking up lately.

Of all the guys on the team, the only one he really keeps in touch with is Travis. He can’t imagine a world where he doesn’t talk to TK every day, even if they’re like a thousand miles apart. TK is like a beagle, small and loud, but also utterly lovable. Not that Nolan would ever tell him that. They don’t talk about anything in particular, just fish they’ve caught, how their workouts are going. He gets the feeling that TK in Clachan in June is an entirely different animal than TK in Philly in December. Even his texts seem chilled out.

They only talk on the phone once, of _course_ when Nolan is crossfaded half to hell and can barely even remember what they talked about. He has a vague idea that he might have told Travis that he thinks about him the way guys think about their girlfriends. Hopefully not in as many words. The next morning, when he sees the new addition in his call history, he thinks about texting TK about it.

_Hey bud, sorry I bothered you so late last night._

_Hey dude, I was so stoned last night, hope I didn’t say anything weird._

_Thanks for putting up with me last night, I know I was acting strange._

_Do you remember what we talked about last night?_

_Did I tell you I want you to be my girlfriend?????_

Etcetera. Getting increasingly more personal even after that. He doesn’t send any of them. Instead he takes his sisters out to brunch and wears sunglasses even in the shade. Then he goes back home and gets Maddie to dye the underneath of his hair purple. It helps, sort of. If he can’t say to TK “I’m gay,” or something like it, at least he can fuck with his hair. Aimee tends to want to cut bangs whenever something’s happening in his life, but he definitely can’t cut bangs without looking like. Something. A mullet, maybe.

The next week, he’s obviously still thinking about it, because he’s really good at. Stewing. He googles “which ear is the gay ear” and “earlobe piercing healing time” and then goes back to the same shop where he gets all his work done and gets the gay ear pierced (it’s the right one, apparently). 

The week after that, he’s still thinking about it, so he gets Aimee to shave the underneath of his hair (which is still pretty purple). 

None of it does anything about the fact that he thinks about TK way more than is really appropriate, or the fact that he keeps wondering “Would TK think I look good like this?” or the fact that he spends way too long re-watching TK’s Snapchats of him fishing (and not for the photos of the fish).

Maybe it’s stupid to do all this shit to his body at the same time, but he’s got this itching up under his skin that just won’t quit, and all the stuff he’s been doing has been quieting it down. Not that he’d ever admit to it—itchy under the skin is a TK thing, really, but he’d also be a fool to pretend he doesn’t have any feelings going on behind his laconic façade. He’s pretty sure his teammates don’t believe that, anyway.

Between that and training, the beginning of the season seems to come around quicker than it has any right to. 

——— 

It’s not like Nolan didn’t tell TK he was moving into the same apartment building. It’s just that he told him late at night when they were both kind of drunk, and TK wasn’t sure that he was really being serious. So it’s one thing to vaguely remember that conversation, and another thing to text Patty to come over and hear him clattering down the hall after only a few minutes.

It’s also not like they haven’t exchanged selfies over the summer—they have a 102 day Snap-streak to keep up. But it’s one thing to see a photo of Pats’ wicked septum piercing, and another thing to see it in person, the unconscious way he touches straightens it in his nose.

There’s a moment where it’s weird—Travis is too tan, Patty’s hair is too long, they’re too different from where they left off. And then it’s not weird at all, it’s just the two of them, like it always has been. They pick up basically exactly where they left off, living in each other’s pockets, carpooling everywhere, hanging out four nights a week. 

They still don’t talk about the phone call. 

They’re so good at not talking about it that it’s not awkward at all, it’s near half forgotten. 

Just like the phone call, though, it all comes to an end late at night, sitting out on the balcony, looking out over the city. This time, though, there’s no beer or weed or anything else to blame it on.

“Hey. Hey. Hey Patty,” TK starts, poking Nolan’s thigh with his bare toes. “Remember that time when you called me in the middle of the night and told me you thought I was _sooooo great_?” 

He’s not sure why he brings it up. Not talking about it (not thinking about it) has obviously been working for them so far. But there’s some part of him that has evidently still been thinking about it, been turning the moment over in his mind more and more as he sees Nolan again, vulnerable and pierced and soft and tatted and so, so special to him. It’s one thing to ignore feelings when the person is 2000km away, and another to ignore them when the person is sitting right next to you.

“Obviously I remember that phone call, I was crossed, not stupid! Like I could ever forget a conversation like that.” Nolan says, rosy cheeked—half from irritation and half from embarrassment.

“Well how was I supposed to know? It’s not like you ever mentioned it or anything, had me half thinking it didn’t even happen!” Travis says, irritated in response.

“I’m pretty sure I told you I thought of you like my girlfriend, it’s not like I was eager to relive the moment there bud.” He laughs a little, but not quite sincerely.

“I mean. I didn’t mind or anything, so.” TK is turned inward, more tentative than Nolan has probably ever seen him.

“What?” It’s barely audible.

“Like. I won’t be your girlfriend, because I’m very much not a girl. But. If you wanted to. I would be your boyfriend. So.”

“Oh my god.” Nolan doesn’t really have time to think about what he’s doing before he leans over, pulls TK toward him. If you would’ve asked him how he thought this would’ve gone, before, he would’ve said that Travis Loud Mouth Konecny definitely would’ve made the first move. But now that it’s happening, it makes sense this way. You don’t run at an animal crashing and hollering and expecting it to love you. Sometimes, you have to let it come to you. Not that he’s a rabbit, but. TK knows him so well, knows him well enough to know that, maybe, it had to be like this.

And then he’s obviously not thinking about it anymore, because the only thing he’s thinking about is Travis’ lips on his, his weight on Nolan’s thighs, his hands in Nolan’s hair. They’re kissing, half desperate half soft, if that’s possible.

——— 

Nolan is big, Travis obviously knows that. But knowing it like stats on HockeyDB and knowing it like feeling his thighs under Travis, feeling his big hand sliding down over Travis’ ass, is a totally different thing. He feels almost shaky with it, how utterly overwhelming Nolan can be, driving all of his usual asinine little thoughts out of his head. They kiss and kiss until his lips feel funny, until he’s gasping with it.

He knows it’s late, way too late for them to be starting something like this tonight, but he can’t really bring himself to care. He can endure being tired at practice for a few hours, this is worth it. This is, he thinks, probably worth almost anything. 

It’s funny—when they left for the summer, it wasn’t like this. There was no, like, sexual tension in the air that last night sitting in TK’s packed up apartment. And then they went off and had these summers, and Nolan came back poked full of holes and a little twitchy, and TK came back tan, loose and easy with it. It was like maybe, somehow, it couldn’t have been like this, they couldn’t have been like this, without the distance. And maybe without that one weird phone call, too late and loaded with things they weren’t saying.

But then Nolan’s pulling a hand through his hair, and he’s not thinking about it anymore, not analyzing what brought them to this moment, or whatever.


End file.
